Sandy Springs, Georgia, runs on contrasts. City Springs is a downtown built from scratch in 2018 around a performing arts center. The Chattahoochee River forms the city's northern edge. Public art stands where people actually walk, live theater plays on a 1,096-seat stage and a 99-seat one, and the local calendar is busier than a north metro suburb has any right to be.
The spring that gave this city its name still runs a few feet off a sidewalk on Sandy Springs Circle. A short walk away, a thousand people are taking their seats for a Broadway musical. Both of those are Sandy Springs.
Photo Credit: Maksim Sundukov, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Start somewhere smaller, though. The shops below are where the city keeps its personality.
Local Finds Worth Knowing
These independent shops explain Sandy Springs better than any directory; all four were open in September 2026.
Phoenix & Dragon Bookstore opened in 1987 in a small bungalow on Hammond Drive and moved to its current, much larger Roswell Road home in 1995. It is a metaphysical and spiritual bookstore that works like a community center: art shows, classes and workshops fill the calendar, and there is a meditation garden out back for when the books get to be a lot.
Kudzu and Company, at 6450 Roswell Road, is a family-owned, 24,000-square-foot store for furnishings, custom upholstery, lighting and gifts, with antiques, vintage and midcentury pieces from local dealers and artists mixed in. Plan to lose an hour.
Fragile, at 6235-B Roswell Road, sits directly across the road from City Springs. Its 9,000-square-foot showroom is walled with fine china, crystal, stemware and dinnerware, and it is where Sandy Springs goes for wedding registries and serious hostess gifts.
The Drake Closet, at 6030 Sandy Springs Circle, is a volunteer-run resale boutique for women's clothing, shoes and accessories. Every purchase benefits The Drake House, which provides short-term crisis housing and programs for single mothers and their children in north metro Atlanta. It is also a two-minute walk from the springs.
Arts & Culture in Sandy Springs
Sandy Springs' arts scene is built around one downtown performing arts center, two theatre companies working at very different scales, a city-backed public art program and a hands-on arts center. Here is how the pieces fit together.
The Sandy Springs Performing Arts Center at City Springs is what makes the district serious. Its Byers Theatre seats 1,096 on three levels, including box seats, with a full orchestra pit and a fly loft. It is a house built to take a national tour, not a municipal multipurpose room. Next door, the Studio Theatre is a flexible room for cabaret, comedy, chamber programs and the occasional very good after-party.
City Springs Theatre Company is the Byers' anchor tenant. Sandy Springs residents formed it in 2017, it opened with 42nd Street in September 2018, and it has staged Broadway-scale musicals there ever since, twenty minutes from Buckhead. The company says it has served more than 320,000 audience members. Tony Award winner Shuler Hensley is its artistic director.
Georgia Ensemble Theatre is the useful counterweight. The professional company, founded in 1992, spent about three decades at the Roswell Cultural Arts Center before moving to the Act3 Playhouse, a 99-seat black box at 6285-R Roswell Road in Sandy Springs Plaza. A thousand seats and a fly loft on one end of Roswell Road; a room where you can see the actors breathe on the other.
The Gallery at City Springs, in the City Hall lobby, hangs rotating exhibitions of local artists' work, curated by Art Sandy Springs (ArtSS) four times a year. It is free and open during City Hall hours.
Photo Credit: John Phelan, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (2026)
The Abernathy Arts Center, at 254 Johnson Ferry Road, is where you make the art instead of looking at it. ArtSS programs weekly classes and workshops there for adults, teens and kids: drawing, painting, calligraphy, fiber arts. The Abernathy Sculpture Garden next door is open ground; walk in, no ticket, no hours to check.
Public art ties it all together. The city's Art in Public Places initiative works with ArtSS on Arts in the Open, including ArtSS in the Open, an outdoor sculpture competition staged at City Springs. Selected pieces stay outside afterward. The free, self-guided City Springs Art Walk loops that sculpture with the Town Turtles collection, which is exactly as charming as it sounds. Kids climb the art; that's the point.
What's on (2026-27): City Springs Theatre Company's ninth season opened with Les Misérables in September 2026. For current productions at the Byers, Studio Theatre and Act3, see Sandy Springs theater listings.
Explore City Springs
City Springs is Sandy Springs' downtown, opened in 2018 at 1 Galambos Way. It holds city hall, the Performing Arts Center, the sloping City Green, restaurants and shops. It answered a question the city had been asking itself for twenty years: where is the middle of this place?
The best way to use it is to park once and walk. See the sculpture on the Art Walk, duck into the Gallery at City Springs, eat on Blue Stone Road, then catch a show. The City Green out front is the city's big outdoor room. It hosts the Saturday Farmers Market, the free City Green Live concert series, Sundown Social evenings on City Green Plaza, and the major civic events: Stars & Stripes on July 4, Juneteenth, Blue Stone, OktoberFEAST and Sparkle. Free Movies by Moonlight screenings play a short walk away on the Heritage Amphitheatre lawn.
For dinner before a Byers curtain, our Art & Dine partners in Atlanta are the ones worth planning around:
Eclipse di Luna, Dunwoody: Spanish tapas on Ashford Dunwoody Road, about ten minutes east, with live flamenco and Latin music some nights.
Amalfi Buckhead: Italian on Peachtree Road, on the drive up from town.
5Church Atlanta: Buckhead, a bigger-occasion room for a night that starts with dinner and ends at a musical.
Outdoors & the Chattahoochee
The Chattahoochee River is Sandy Springs' northern boundary, so culture here runs out of doors quickly. Three places define it.
Photo Credit: Jftalley, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (2020)
Island Ford is the headquarters and visitor center unit of the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, and it sits inside the city. Expect about three miles of riverside trails, ranger programs and exhibits at the Hewlett Lodge visitor center, and free Junior Ranger booklets for kids. Outfitters along the river run roughly May through September for kayaking, paddleboarding and float trips.
Photo Credit: J. Andrew Flenniken, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Morgan Falls Dam came online in October 1904, one of Georgia's first large hydroelectric projects, built to run Atlanta's streetcars twelve miles south. Its reservoir, Bull Sluice Lake, is still there; the dam was raised in 1957 to help regulate flow from Buford Dam upstream. It's why this stretch of river is wide, slow and lined with trails instead of industry. Morgan Falls Overlook Park, just downstream, has playgrounds, picnic sites and long views over the lake. It's also the finish line for the city's best piece of participatory art, the spring Lantern Parade.
Lost Corner Preserve, at Brandon Mill and Dalrymple roads, is 24 wooded acres that were a working farm from the mid-1800s. Shaded dirt trails loop the property past a community garden, a greenhouse, an apiary and a 1920s bungalow built on the old homestead's foundation.
Where Sandy Springs Began
Photo Credit: John Phelan, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (2025)
Heritage Green, on Sandy Springs Circle, is where the city's name comes from. The name is literal: travelers used the springs bubbling up through white sand here long before there was a settlement, and the settlement grew around them. In 1851 Wilson Spruill deeded five acres surrounding the springs for a Methodist church. That was the founding act of the community, and it's the reason you can still walk up and stand next to the water today.
The grounds hold the spring itself, the state historical marker, a terraced entertainment lawn, a September 11 memorial, Heritage Hall, and the Williams-Payne House, an 1860s-era farmhouse moved to the site, restored with period furnishings and opened to the public in 1990. Twenty minutes here does something the towers on Roswell Road can't: it puts a date on the place. Water, a church, five donated acres, a farmhouse. Everything else is a consequence.
The city itself is much younger. Sandy Springs spent most of its life as the busy, unincorporated stretch of Fulton County everyone drove through on the way somewhere else. On June 21, 2005, after roughly forty years of campaigning led by Eva Galambos, residents voted to incorporate. It was the first new city in Georgia in nearly fifty years, and the template a dozen more followed. Thirteen years later it built itself a downtown.
Recurring Events in Sandy Springs
These are the fixtures that give the city its rhythm between the big dates.
Sandy Springs Farmers Market: Saturday mornings, 8:30 a.m. to noon, rain or shine, at City Springs.
Tai Chi on the City Green: a city recreation class taught with the USA Chen Taiji Center, Wednesday and Friday mornings at 10. Slow, outdoors and open to all ages.
Sundown Social: select Thursday evenings, 6 to 8 p.m., from May into fall on City Green Plaza, with a local musician, lawn games and an outdoor bar.
Concerts by the Springs: free concerts on the terraced Heritage Amphitheatre lawn, one Sunday a month from May through September. Bring a blanket, arrive early, claim a terrace.
Funny Fridays: comedy nights that turn the Studio Theatre into a club, hosted by Atlanta comedian Joel Byars, with a rotating cast of local comics.
No Shame Theatre: a late-night, sign-up-at-the-door variety show at Georgia Ensemble Theatre's Act3 Playhouse on Fridays. Performers get up to five minutes for original work.
Sandy Springs Night Market: a new evening market on the first Thursday of September, October and November, 5 to 8 p.m., at River Springs Shopping Center, 8610 Roswell Road (not City Springs).
For this week's shows and concerts, see live music in Sandy Springs.
Sandy Springs Month by Month
January-March
Indoor season. The Byers and Studio Theatre carry the calendar, City Springs Theatre Company stages its late-winter musical, and Abernathy class sessions start fresh.
April
The outdoor calendar starts to fill in, and lantern-making workshops lead up to the parade.
May
The Lantern Parade walks about a mile down Morgan Falls Road to the river after dark; 2026 was its tenth. Sundown Social and Concerts by the Springs open their seasons.
June
Food That Rocks, a ticketed, 21-and-over tasting night, brings more than 25 Sandy Springs restaurants to the City Green. On June 19, the city's free Juneteenth celebration fills the Green with music, dance and local vendors.
July
Stars & Stripes, the free July 4 concert and fireworks on the City Green. Don McLean headlined in 2026.
August
River outfitters are in full swing. The Sandy Springs SUP Showdown, a paddleboard race from Morgan Falls Overlook Park, debuted on August 15, 2026; whether it returns is still to be seen.
September
The busiest month. City Springs Theatre Company opens its season, the Night Market started its first run in 2026, and the free Blue Stone Arts & Music Festival takes over downtown late in the month. Blue Stone is the former Sandy Springs Festival, which spent more than three decades at Heritage Green; 2026 is its fourth year under the new name.
October
OktoberFEAST, a free two-day festival of German food, polka and the Swinging Bavarians at City Springs, reached its third year in 2026. Halloween brings a spooky-themed Movies by Moonlight with a costume contest.
November
The Sandy Springs Society's Elegant Elf Marketplace fills the Performing Arts Center with up to 100 holiday vendors; 2026 is its fifteenth year. The Night Market has its last date of the year.
December
Sparkle Sandy Springs, the city's annual holiday celebration, brings a nighttime parade, a tree and menorah lighting, and a food and gift market to City Springs. Holiday musicals fill the Byers, and in 2026 the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra comes north from Midtown for a New Year's Eve concert.
Dates and schedules change from year to year. See current Sandy Springs events on CultureOwl.
Free Things to Do
Most of the city's culture costs nothing: the City Springs Art Walk and Town Turtles, the Abernathy Sculpture Garden, the Gallery at City Springs, Heritage Green and the springs, the trails at Island Ford and Lost Corner Preserve, Concerts by the Springs, City Green Live, Movies by Moonlight, Stars & Stripes, Juneteenth, the Lantern Parade, Blue Stone and OktoberFEAST.
Sandy Springs With Kids
Start with the Town Turtles on the Art Walk, then the playgrounds and lake views at Morgan Falls Overlook Park. Island Ford hands out free Junior Ranger booklets, the Abernathy Arts Center runs youth classes, and the Lantern Parade is made for small hands holding homemade lanterns.
One Day in Sandy Springs
Morning. Heritage Green: the spring, the marker, the lawn, the farmhouse. On a Saturday, start at the farmers market instead, then browse Phoenix & Dragon or Kudzu and Company.
Midday. Down to City Springs. Walk the Art Walk, find the Town Turtles, eat on Blue Stone Road.
Afternoon. River trails at Island Ford, or a class or exhibition at the Abernathy Arts Center if the weather turns on you.
Evening. A musical in the Byers Theatre, a play at Act3 or, in summer, a free concert on the lawn. In late September, Blue Stone replaces the entire itinerary, and you should let it.
Sandy Springs is a driving city: keep the car for the hops between Heritage Green, City Springs and the river. With a second day, drive about forty-five minutes southwest to the Art Farm at Serenbe Wildflower Meadow in Chattahoochee Hills, where large-scale sculpture stands in open pasture. No proscenium, no ticket, just a field and the work in it.
What's Happening Now
The places above don't change very often. The calendar does. Plan with CultureOwl's live pages: things to do in Sandy Springs, things to do this weekend, art and museum events in Sandy Springs, Sandy Springs live music, Sandy Springs theater and Sandy Springs venues.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the best arts and culture things to do in Sandy Springs, GA?
See a City Springs Theatre Company musical in the Byers Theatre or a play at Georgia Ensemble Theatre's Act3 Playhouse, walk the free City Springs Art Walk, visit Heritage Green and the original springs, take a class at the Abernathy Arts Center, and hike the river trails at Island Ford.
Is City Springs in Sandy Springs?
Yes. City Springs is Sandy Springs' downtown, at 1 Galambos Way: city hall, the Performing Arts Center, the City Green, restaurants and shops.
What theaters are in Sandy Springs?
The Sandy Springs Performing Arts Center has two stages: the 1,096-seat Byers Theatre, home of City Springs Theatre Company, and the flexible Studio Theatre. Georgia Ensemble Theatre performs at the 99-seat Act3 Playhouse on Roswell Road.
When is the Sandy Springs Farmers Market?
Saturday mornings from 8:30 a.m. to noon, rain or shine, at City Springs, 1 Galambos Way.
What happened to the Sandy Springs Festival?
It became the Blue Stone Arts & Music Festival and moved from Heritage Green to the City Springs district. It is free and held each September; 2026 is its fourth year.
When is the Sandy Springs Lantern Parade?
Each spring, ending at Morgan Falls Overlook Park on the Chattahoochee. The 2026 parade was Saturday, May 9. Check the city calendar for the next date.
